Stop the Heart

Ernie Maglischo once said to me, 'Heart rate gets you into the stadium but it doesn't get you a good seat.' And, he's right.

Using HR prescriptions as the primary means of training intensity is stupid. Its a scatter gun approach which makes life too easy for the committed swimmers and too easy to cheat for the uncommitted. Swimmers can settle in to repetitions at, say, 160 bpm, and stay there with no real effort, commitment, concentration, focus or application at all. They can do the set brainless. Ask them to swim the same set holding a particular time, holding a particular stroke count and, just out of interest, watch what happens to their HR and you get a different story; they are now challenged. They have to think. They have to concentrate. They have to be conscious. They have to manage their technique, effort and application to complete the set correctly. While they're doing all that the coach can easily check their time and stroke rate and, therefore, know if they're 'holding steady' falling apart or randomly bouncing around all over the place.

Do not use heart rate as your primary intensity check. No two swimmers are the same, they have different maximums and different resting levels, therefore they have different functional ranges. Check out the FAQ's here and design your sets with layers of complexity starting with time targets, then stroke count or stroke rate targets as checks of effectiveness, then check what is happening to the heart rate as an indicator of improved or deteriorating efficiency.

Compile training times using the colour-coding system on the Cone, e.g. 10 x 200 'red' and have charts on the pool wall so swimmers can look up and learn their particular speed ranges for each colour zone. Recording test set information on a regular basis will enable you to do this relatively easily.

By all means have a heart but don't use it!

FINA article now uploaded

See the post below this one - Aiming to be Average!

Aiming to be Average!

The October issue of Fina Aquatics World has just landed. It's sent out to all National Governing Bodies although you can subscribe if you wish. In the past it's been a pretty useless collection of paper but lately its had a make-over and now contains some interesting stuff. This month there's part 2 of an article on Legendary Coaches highlighting Lawrie Lawrence, Mark Schubert, Richard Quick, Tamas Szechy, Gennadi Touretski and Alberto Castagnetti and an article titled Age Group Coaching Patterns which I have scanned and will upload for all coaches of Squad swimmers as soon as blogspot sorts out its uploading problems (now uploaded).

It's a mini-version of LTAD and was written by FINA Coaches Commission Members John Leonard, Osvaldo Arsenio, Alan Thompson and Leif Carlsson. A simple overview shows four stages:

1 Learning to swim
2 The Younger Age Group, 6-12 years
3 Older Age Group Development, 13-17 years
4 Becoming Senior Athletes, 18-22 years

For the 6-12 year olds they recommend two 'swim team experiences' a week at age 6, increasing to 4-7 experiences at age 10 with practices being 20-30 minutes at 6-7, 30-40 minutes at 8-9 and 60-90 minutes for more advanced 10 year olds and a total volume between 50km and 75km a year. Competition should be limited to 1-2 days each month.

The 11-12 year olds is where it gets interesting for NZL. They recognise significant differences in training needs between males and females with the females having a 'window of opportunity' for great aerobic develoment (males 2-3 years later) ... 'with substantially increased strong aerobic training each week'. They recommend training 5-8 times per week for 60-90 minutes with some 12 year old females doing more.

'Training should increase from 40 to 50 weeks and between 150km and 175km of distance each year.' That recommendation should be noted by many Kiwi programmes; it equates to an average of between 30km and 40km each week. DO NOT BE COMPLACENT. That's an average. It means most training weeks have to be at least 40km to 50km. For 11-12 year olds. They don't train 52 weeks a year. They have holidays. They get sick and miss training. They travel to competitions. For some unknown reason many 11-12 year olds taper! Maintaining an average of 40km per week is not easy. Your programme probably doesn't even approach it (the 'rucksack and rifles' coaches out there and Gary Hollywood please bear with me, it's everyone else we're talking to.)

Stage 3, 13-17 years sees training progress to 12-14 sessions per week and maybe up to 28 hours during training camps. The authors excellently recognise that sprinters may spend more time in the pool than distance swimmers but will do lower volume. Also worthy of a sign on your office wall is their statement, 'Common wisdom in this age range will dictate training aimed at twice the distance that the athlete will actually select as their main competition emphasis.'

The authors sum up with (this is a condensed version):

1 Athletes are individuals ...
2 Aerobic development is paramount to competitive success ...
3 ... the rewards of sport must be internalised because no external rewards are sufficient enough to produce the work necessary for world class success ...
4 Improvement ... is a long term proposition, with no shortcuts to success.
5 The athletes must 'own the sport' ...

All in all, an excellent article.

The Perfect Race

Efficient release of energy during a race results in great splits, almost invariably negative splits and even descending sections of a whole race. My favourite of all time was Janet Evans' winning effort on the 400m Freestyle at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games:

0:59.99 - 2:02.14 - 3:03.40 - 4:03.85

That's 60 - 62 - 61 - 60

In the infamous words of one of my countrymen, 'It just doesn't get any better than that.'

It gets faster than that of course; Evans' world record stood from 22 September 1988 until 6 August 2006 but Laura Manaudou's 57-61-62-61, although faster, just doesn't sit in the same league as far as 'all-time-greatest-swims' are concerned.

You can view the 1988 race on youtube here. Her characteristically high stroke rate averages around 55 for the whole race. It's difficult from the film to check accurately but measurements I've taken indicate she used a faster SR on the second 25 of each 50 than she did on the first 25 - the hallmark of REALLY great swimming. If you weren't there to watch it live you'll be surprised how close Heike Friedrich was until the last 50m - Evans did not have it all her own way but check out her face at the end; total disbelief that she'd gone 4:03 against her previous best of 4:05.45.

Other great swims that spring to mind:

Kornelia Ender's 200m Freestyle in 1976
David Wilkie's 200m Breaststroke in 1972
Duncan Armstrong's 200m Freestyle in 1988
Kieren Perkins' 400m Freestyle in 1994
Any 1,500 by Vladimir Salnikov
And not forgetting Henry Taylor's 1,500 in 1908

What's your favourite?

Unlimited Access

Many of you were having problems accessing the blog site so I've removed the restrictions; it is now no longer a 'private' blog but is open to the world!